How Northampton's council licenses dog boarders
West Northamptonshire Council is the single licensing authority for the whole of this page: Northampton, Kingsthorpe, Weston Favell, Wootton, Daventry and Towcester have all sat under one unitary council since April 2021, when it replaced the former Northampton Borough, Daventry District and South Northamptonshire Councils. In England, home boarding, day care and boarding kennels are all licensed activities under the Animal Welfare (Licensing of Activities Involving Animals) (England) Regulations 2018, and it is the council that issues and renews the licence for each one, whatever type of business it is.
How the register works here
West Northamptonshire Council publishes a live licence search plus a downloadable star-rating spreadsheet that adds a licence number, star rating and licence type to each entry; the council's own page states the spreadsheet is correct as of a stated date and will be replaced once the council launches a new database. Nine of the 19 businesses listed for this page are matched against that published register: Hound Dogs, 4-Paws, Maddie's Home from Home, Dennylini's Dog Hotel, Pearson Paws, Andrea's Animals, The Little Pooch House, Teddy's Dog Care and Parklands Pooches.
Star ratings, where the council has assigned one
A council star rating runs from 1 to 5 and is the council's own inspection score, not a customer review, so read it the way you would a food hygiene rating rather than a Google star count. Of the nine matched businesses, four hold a 5-star rating (4-Paws, Maddie's Home from Home, The Little Pooch House and Teddy's Dog Care), four hold 4 stars (Hound Dogs, Dennylini's Dog Hotel, Pearson Paws and Andrea's Animals), and one, Parklands Pooches, holds 3 stars.
The register's gap: Daventry and Towcester
The other ten businesses listed for this page, mostly based around Daventry and Towcester, do not currently appear on West Northamptonshire Council's published register, even though several — including Hunsbury Dog Services, Doggies Friend Daycare Centre and Happy Hounds Towcester — state their own licence number on their own site. The council's current spreadsheet appears to be a legacy file built on the old Northampton Borough boundary that has not yet absorbed licence holders from the former Daventry District and South Northamptonshire areas, rather than evidence that these ten businesses are unlicensed. This directory does not copy a self-stated licence number into a business's licence details unless it has been matched against the council's own published register, so these ten are shown without a licence block rather than with an unverified one.
What to check yourself
You can search a trading name on West Northamptonshire Council's animal licence star-rating register to confirm a licence and its current rating. For any of the ten businesses not shown there, ask to see the licence certificate directly, and check back once the council's promised new database is live, since that is expected to close the Daventry and Towcester gap described above.